By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

African American English in the Diaspora investigates the origins ofAfrican American Vernacular English (A.A.V.E.). Using evidence fromrecorded conversations of ex-slaves and their descendants in the UnitedStates, the Samana Peninsula in the Dominican Republic and in NovaScotia, this work attempts to bring more light to bear on theconvergence/divergence debate that has been one of the main foci ofattention in A.A.V.E. studies in the past sixteen years since thepublication of Labov and Harris's (1986) &quot;De Facto Segregation of Blackand White Vernaculars.&quot;

In this book, Poplack and Tagliamonte provide ample and necessarybackground information about the diaspora itself: about who the peopleinvolved were, why they left and where they went. They investigate thetense/aspect system of historic (or preserved) varieties to establishwhether their structure is more commensurate with a creole origin orwith an English origin. They argue that, even after a prolonged periodof decreolization, a language should show signs in its tense and aspectof a creole origin if one exists. They combine methods of variationistsociolinguistics and historical linguistics to asses the relationshipsbetween various corpora including historic and contemporary speechcommunities in North America and England.

In the first chapter, the basic structure of the book is outlined withsummaries of the nature of the diaspora communities and the methods tobe used in the analysis of the data.

In chapters two and three,the validity of the data for this research isoutlined. Convincing historical material is reviewed which confirmsthat the population of the Samana Peninsula of the Dominican Republicand the North Preston and Guysborough communities in Nova Scotiaprovide language data of a variety of A.A.V.E. that should be relevantto the current research. The relative isolation of these communitiesguaranteed that the speech that was analyzed had been essentiallyunaffected by outside influences and, thus, closely reflects theA.A.V.E. of the time of the diaspora.

Chapter four outlines the external controls in the research in the formof data from Ex-Slave Recordings (E.S.R.) and language data fromGuysborough Village, a white enclave in Nova Scotia, from Ottawa,Canada and from Tiverton, Devon in England. The Guysborough data isclearly relevant being geographically close to one of the A.A.V.E.groups under investigation. The Ottawa data represents a source of nearstandard Canadian English. The Tiverton data represents a Britishexample that should have changed little being in a relatively isolatedpart of England. The Guysborough Village, Ottawa and Tiverton corporaare uncontroversial selections for controls, but the E.S.R. are moredebatable.

The E.S.R. were made largely largely in the 1930s of people born intoslavery between 1840 and 1865. There is criticism of the validity ofthese recordings as viable sources of linguistic data, but Poplack andTagliamonte go to some length in assuaging our fears over this issue.The E.S.R. act as a control for the Samana and Nova Scotia data in sofar as the e-slaves recorded were born within a few decades of themigrants of the diaspora. However the potential for speechaccommodation on the part of the interviewees is not fully addressedand this still leaves the reader with some doubt as to the usefulnessof the data.

Chapter five outlines the comparative method used in the analysis ofthe data. Chapter six applies this to an analysis if the past tense andchapter seven to an analysis of the present tense. Chapter eight looksat the future. These three chapters impress the reader with the rigorof their approach. The multivariate statistical analysis providesconvincing evidence of a lack of an underlying creole origin. It issuggested that the lack of past markings in weak verbs can largely beaccounted for by phonological rule (-t/-d deletion) which is widelyestablished in the literature. The fact that strong verbs maintain thepast markings offers further evidence in support of the proposal thatlack of tense marking is phonological rather than morphological anddoes not, therefore, prove a genetic link to creoles that lack a pastmarker. The evidence for the present tense argument is less convincingespecially in light of research by Singler (1997) among others. Theyargue equally convincingly that the use of -s provides evidence for acreole origin to A.A.V.E. in its various guises.

Chapter nine summarizes the findings of the analyses. The basic findingof the research is that the statistical evidence from what appears tobe the language of African Americans in the middle of the nineteenthcentury showed that A.A.V.E. was more like the white varieties ofEnglish than a creole. This suggests that the creole origin hypothesisis put seriously in doubt and that we have been experiencing markeddivergence in black and white varieties of the language which brings usto the position that currently obtains in North America.

As stated above, the arguments presented in the text are extremelyconvincing. However, there are a few points that might be addressed.Although the book is very much focused on the tense/aspect system, thisis not the only factor that can tie into a creole or British origin tothe language. Singler (1989) for example, has found evidence fromplural markings in Liberian Settler English to support a creole origin.Rickford (1999), among others, investigates the copula in A.A.V.E. andfinds ties to creole languages.

One addition that this reader feels would greatly add to the argumentsof this work would be the use of an acknowledged creole language usedas a control for comparison purposes. As Jamaican Patwa and TrinidadianCreole provide data of a post-creole continuum, it would be interestingto see how an analysis of that data would compare with the othercorpora analyses that are outlined in this work.

Of course, we have no in depth discussion of A.A.V.E. in the centuriesprior to the diaspora. Rickford (1999) provides a useful socio-historiccontext that suggests that a creole is still a viable option forA.A.V.E. genesis. More significantly, he, (Rickford) (1987) has shownthat convergence and divergence can be operant at different times inthe same speech varieties. He suggests that there is no evidence toshow that A.A.V.E. had not already decreolized by the middle of thelast century as we have no actual data related to periods before thattime. Even those who support the creole genesis theory do not suggestthat A.A.V.E. decreolized uniformly. Those with more contact withCaucasian speakers would have more acrolectal speech. Consequently, atany given time there will exist a whole continuum of A.A.V.E. from thebasilectal to the accrolectal. We would need to know the socialstanding of all those who migrated to the various diasporadestinations. It would be wrong to assume a basilectal language levelfor all of the migrants as we know that many of those who lead themigrations were not field slaves but educated and , thus, almostcertainly spoke a variety of English reasonably high in the A.A.V.E.continuum. This would clearly affect the development of their languagein the following century.

Although this book provides excellent and rigorous discussion ofclearly relevant data, it does not write the final word (nor does itclaim to) on the whole divergence/convergence origin of A.A.V.E.debate.

This volume is the most recent addition to the excellent Language inSociety series from Blackwell. It is essential reading for any studentof A.A.V.E.

REFERENCESLabov, William and Wendell Harris. 1986. &quot;De Facto Segregation of Blackand White Vernaculars.&quot; in Diversity and Diachrony. ed. by DavidSankoff. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

_____, (1997) On the genesis, evolution and diversity of AfricanAmerican English: Evidence from verbal -s in the Liberian SettlerEnglish of Sinoe. Paper read at SPCL at London, England.

ABOUT THE REVIEWERWilliam J. Stone received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in2000 and is now an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at NortheasternIllinois University in Chicago. His current interests include A.A.V.E.,Syllable Structure, T.E.S.L. and Syntax for teaching purposes.